


Biting the Same Bullet

by starbolin



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, First Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:48:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starbolin/pseuds/starbolin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three stolen cars and a railway ride between Volgograd and Budapest, and she still doesn’t know who he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Biting the Same Bullet

**Author's Note:**

> "He made a different call."

2:12, Natasha notes grimly, and turns onto her side, away from the red glow of the digital readout, working her fingers with renewed determination. She’ll just be that much more useless if she doesn’t sleep at least a couple of hours, and she’s counting on the rush of endorphins to ease the swollen ache in her jaw long enough to let her doze off.

Her wrist is angry too, wrenched tendons and bruised bones protesting the small, careful motions, but leaving it rigid and working from the elbow only rustles the sheets. She stops to listen, but the shape beside her is still and quiet. 

Three stolen cars and a railway ride between Volgograd and Budapest, and she still doesn’t know who he is. Or, for that matter, why he’s so clearly off-mission -- one man professionally equipped for a single-target range kill taking out a dozen people inside a building hadn’t been anyone’s plan. Still, Ivan is the kind of dead you don't have to double check, and she isn’t, and here they are. Back to back in a hotel bed in most of their clothes, Natasha and the man who’d greeted her by name even as he’d fitted another arrow to his bow, loosing it into the throat of someone whose death she’d heard but not seen.

Clamping her hand between her thighs, she turns onto her back again, and goes still when she sees his face turned toward her, eyes open, glittering in the dark. They stare at each other for an endless, tense second.

He takes an audible breath, exhales, and then he’s rolling to his feet at the side of the bed, standing. The way he moves makes it clear he’s hard in his trousers, and before she thinks about it, she says, “Wait.” Her voice is rough with fatigue, and it hurts her mouth a little to talk, but her consonants are clear enough. 

He halts and looks over his shoulder, not quite at the bed; his outline is crisp and dark against the faint glow of city light beyond the drapes, mussed hair and strong arms.

“If you want to,” she says, and doesn’t bother to put any particular inflection into it, because, whether he knows it or not, she can leave this stranger any time she likes, so she doesn’t have to tilt her head seductively and say _let me take care of that for you,_ or even smile at him if she doesn’t want to. It’s still utility sex, but a different kind of utility, which she finds pleasant.

He shakes his head, small smile changing his profile for a brief moment before it’s gone. “Thanks anyway.”

“Not your type?”

“More like not into sex that feels like taking advantage of someone’s shitty situation, but I’m flattered that you think I’d turn you down on looks.”

Amused, she squeezes herself again. “You could go down on me. Then you’d be the one being taken advantage of.”

He snorts and turns his head further, finding her gaze. “Only assuming that’s not what I’d want to do in the first place.”

“A killer in the streets, but a gentleman in the sheets.” She lifts an eyebrow, effect probably lost in the dim light. “Well, if you’re determined to be polite, you could look for a 24-hour pharmacy and get me some aspirin. I’ll try to finish before you get back.”

“You’re in -- Of course you’re in pain,” he interrupts himself, and circles the bed, planting a hand at the edge of the mattress and leaning in to inspect her face. This close, she can see his scowl clearly, the careworn lines of his face, catch his scent, warm with sleep-sweat and sweetened around the edges by hotel shampoo. “Shit. Should have had you ice that. I could go down and see if --”

Natasha takes her fingers from between her legs and sets them against his lips. He inhales convulsively, going still, and she says, again, holding his eyes, “If you want to.”

Slowly, nostrils flaring with each breath, he lowers himself to his knees beside the bed, then waits there until she slides the fingers against the seam of his mouth. He opens, letting her rub over the textured surface of his tongue, warm wet muscle that shifts slightly beneath her touch.

“I’d appreciate it,” she adds, and he closes his lips around her fingers and sucks, tonguing at the blunt edges of her fingernails, then releases them and leans up, reaches beneath the sheet for her body. Finding her hips, he pulls them to the edge of the bed; she lifts up as he tugs her pants over her legs, lets him spread her thighs and lean in, mouthing at her through the cotton of her underwear. He finds her clit and sucks briefly, then moves on. When he trails his tongue along her inner thigh just beyond the leg band, she reaches down and strips them off herself, ignoring his soft huff of laughter as she drops them to the floor.

He slides strong arms around the backs of her thighs and tilts her pelvis to his mouth, licks the crease of the opposite thigh. Sucks at the skin of her hip, reaches further up her body to push her shirt up and palm her breast, forearm twined around her ribcage as he takes one of her nipples between his index and middle finger. It’s a vulnerable position to be in; or else, it would be, if she weren’t the Black Widow.

He lifts off briefly to mutter, “Some other time, honey,” and she realizes her muscles have shifted and tensed without her conscious permission, thighs preparing to tighten and hips to twist. Chyort voz'mi, fucking amateur telegraphing. She relaxes deliberately, and he makes an approving sound, mouth already on her again, hot and clever, tongue stroking up her labia and flickering over her clit.

Yeah, he’s good; even better, he seems to read her body as well with regard to pleasure as the intent to kill, and she finds that a slight shift of muscle and a change in her breathing is enough to correct him when he uses a technique she finds less pleasant, to encourage him when he does something better. Idly, she runs her nails over his scalp, traces the rim of his ear with the pad of her thumb.

She’s throbbing and swollen with arousal by the time he takes his hand from her breast to slide his palm up her thigh, thumb resting in the crease of her groin, and she draws a heel up his back to open herself further in invitation. He sucks at his fingers and slides two of them into her, crooking up experimentally, then pressing down, making her feel full inside as he circles her clit with the tip of his tongue. The pad of his third finger strokes absently over the opening of her ass, and she says, “Yes, please,” letting out a soft grunt of approval as he pushes it inside her to the first knuckle, tongue circling, circling.

Shifting her hips makes her aware of how slippery she is against his face, the fresh sweat at the backs of her knees. He's making soft noise now, crooning low in his throat as he sucks at her clit, batting and stroking it with his tongue. As she gets closer, her breath begins to lock in her chest for longer and longer moments between inhale and exhale. 

She comes silently, even as she involuntarily grits her teeth and sends a jolt of pain through her face.

One deep breath, then another; he withdraws his fingers from her body, and she shudders as the last waves of pleasure slosh from one end of her to the other, sparking her nerves as they pass.

He's shaking too, eyes closed beneath a creased brow, lips parted slightly. One hand is still splayed out on her hip, but --

Not shaking. He’s masturbating below the edge of the bed. 

She sits up to see. The open sides of his fly conceal most of his balls and pubic hair, and his square, rough-knuckled hand doesn’t leave much visible, but he looks like a nice size, curving slightly upward. Like most Americans, he appears to be circumcised, or perhaps he just doesn’t have much foreskin to show when he’s hard. 

“Come up here,” she says, and he opens his eyes, hand going still.

“You sure?”

She leans back on an elbow and beckons him with a curt crook of fingers. Gracefully, he rises, setting one knee onto the bed, then waits, cock jutting out from the opening of his trousers, until she pulls him down onto all fours above her body. She draws her knees up until they touch the backs of his thighs and reaches for the swaying weight of his erection. As her hand closes around it, he exhales slightly, muscles shifting in the arms braced on either side of her. The modest curve of his lower lip looks redder than it did before, softer, and she thinks that if her own weren’t split, if the outside of her cheek weren’t a cross-hatched scrape and the inside a mess of cuts from her own teeth, that she might try to kiss him. 

Instead, she slips her free hand around the back of his neck and, careful of her strained wrist, scrapes her nails lightly against his skin, then digs them into the nape of his neck. His breath comes out on a moan, making her want to try pulling his hair, but it’s too short. Instead, she runs the back of her hand up the hard contours of his belly and pinches a nipple through his soft, clinging t-shirt. He makes a rough sound, thrusting his cock into her grip, and she hooks her wrist gingerly beneath the hem of the shirt, drags it up his chest and pinches the nipple again.

“I’m getting close,” he says, and she flicks the nipple with a thumbnail, stroking him faster.

“How far do you usually ejaculate?”

He blinks. “Not that far, I guess, why?”

“Because if you get it in my hair, I’m going to put you in a headlock and rub it into your face,” she says evenly, and he gives a choked moan, hips thrusting wildly, then picks one hand up from the bed to wrap it around hers, biceps muscle bunching in his other arm as he supports his weight, cupping his own cockhead as he ejaculates in hot spurts. 

At the tail end of his orgasm, he begins a light stroke, skimming along the top couple of inches, the glans. He’s still mostly hard, and his eyes are closed now, a line of concentration deepening between his brows as he jerks off with their combined hands, semen dripping hotly onto her abdomen. She squeezes him on the upstroke, and he shivers, moves their hands faster. No further reduction in his erection. If anything, he’s getting harder. Interested, she says, “Can you come again?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s unusual.”

“I didn’t have sex until I was almost twenty.” His eyes open to mischievous slits, mouth quirking in a half-smile. “Lotta time to make a hobby out of masturbation.”

In one controlled motion, never losing her grip on his cock, she rolls him over onto his back in the middle of the bed and rises up onto an elbow beside him. He doesn't fight, nor make any sound of surprise, but his fingers loosen around hers, so that when she starts up again, he’s simply riding the motion of her hand. His breath is coming quickly and shallowly, nipples tight in his smoothly muscled chest when she pushes up his shirt to see his body. She looks up to find him watching her face; with his free hand, he reaches up, tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear.

“You gonna come in with me?”

She arches an eyebrow, stroking steadily. “Let me guess: you work for the _good guys._ ”

He hitches a laugh. “Well, they’re not the _bad_ guys.”

Face neutral, the kind of visible neutrality she never displays when running an actual con, she says, “I’d be interested in meeting the people who sent you to take me out.”

“And I’m pretty sure they’d be absolutely fascinated to meet you.”

She thumbs at the dip of his frenulum. “I think I’d like to hear your reason for not killing me before I make any decisions.”

He laughs again, shorter and rougher. “When you do, let me know what it is, would you?” When she squeezes his cock, he arches and groans. “Shit. I’m gonna come again.”

He ejaculates less than the first time, she thinks, though it’s somewhat difficult to tell, and starts wincing almost immediately at her touch. She lets go of him and settles down, head pillowed by her own hand, listening to his breathing settle. She closes her eyes.

“Natasha,” he says, and she’s disoriented, because his voice is coming from too far away.

“Natasha,” he says, then, “Ms. Romanov.”

It’s lighter in the room, first deep blue before dawn. She sits up, rubbing her tongue against sticky teeth, squinting at his outline in front of the window. “Romanova. I’m a woman.”

“Sorry. It says Romanov on your file. I don’t really know much about Russian grammar.”

“No one who isn’t Russian understands Russian grammar.” She swings her legs over the edge of the bed, finds her underwear. “Are we going somewhere?”

He beckons to her. “You tell me. See if you know these guys.”

Two dark cars in the street below. A man is exiting one from the passenger’s side, joining two others on the sidewalk.

He shifts his weight beside her, warm skin brushing against her arm, doing his best to look through the same minute crack in the drapes. “Could be unrelated. Or could be they’re here for me, who knows.”

After a moment, another man unfolds from the back of the vehicle and stands up. He’s tall, and, as he turns sideways, displaying his profile, the hair on Natasha’s arms prickles. “No. These are mine.”

“Hm.” Disappearing from her side, he crouches, slides something out from beneath the bed. “We could keep playing nice American couple and go out through the lobby.”

She makes an absent noise of negation; men are already circling the building, gesturing back toward those standing beside the vehicles as they disappear around the corner.

There's the sound of a zipper just behind her, the click of metal on metal. He leans over her shoulder to glance out. “Looks like Mr. and Mrs. Morgan are checking out via the roof. We’ll drop down behind the wall on the southwest side.”

By the time her pants are on, his quiver is on his back, and he's folding some kind of space-age microfiber bag into smaller and smaller triangles with practiced motions, tucking it into the side of his belt. His bow is on the bed, still folded, but she remembers the sharp jerk of his arm that snaps it out, so when he picks it up, she knows it's time. Jacket settled around her shoulders, she scoops up her shoes, checks her knives, and allows him to precede her into the hotel hallway, around a sharp turn to the stairwell.

On the edge of the roof, crouched beside her, he says, “My name is Clint Barton.” 

She pauses, shoes dangling around her neck, legs dangling into five floors of air, and looks up at him.

Slinging his bow across his back, he takes a business card from a pocket inside his strange jacket, tucks it into her ordinary one. She only sees it for a moment, matte black with some Roman-alphabet acronym embossed across the center, an international phone number in dull silver. 

“This is how to reach me. In case we get separated.” His eyes are clear and steady, reflecting the vast, luminous grey of pre-dawn around them, giving nothing away. 

Gripping the edge of the roof, she drops down, seeking the first foothold, then the next.

Having to favor her wrist, she's soon lagging slightly behind him. They’re both just over halfway down the side of the building when there’s a shout below, a pop and the whizz of a bullet, chips of stone pattering down onto her face. Clint says, "Whoops," and Natasha finds herself very glad of those scant few hours of sleep, and wishing her pistol weren't somewhere in Novoshakhtinsk.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Beacon" by Doomtree.
> 
> http://www.doomtree.net/2011/11/beacon-listen-lyrics/


End file.
